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If you are a Christian and/or Catholic writer or blogger, whether you like it or not, your readers are going to be taking you for a knowledgable authority on Christianity and the Bible. And so it is your job to become more knowledgable— at least a little.

In earlier generations Protestant/Evangelical Christians often taught that good Christians were ones that read the Bible every single day. Good Catholics were seen as those who attended daily Mass every day, if possible, and would hear the assigned Bible readings for that day. But today people think they have so much less time for such activity, and in addition many listen to preachers like Joel Osteen who tend to be very ‘lite’ on actual Bible teaching.

Many Christians do read the Bible— but they find much of the Bible difficult. Some end up reading the same few Bible passages over and over, and others read, but without much comprehension. What can take your Bible reading to the next level is reading the Bible using a good Bible commentary.

I learned about Bible commentaries when I was in high school or just starting college. I was a Presbyterian at the time, but planning on becoming Lutheran. At that time, a Bible commentary series, the Tyndale commentary series, was available for sale in Christian bookstores and my college bookstore. Volumes were available for the New Testament and the Protestant books of the Old Testament. I wanted a full set of those commentaries! I know I got Romans, and Revelations. But I lost those volumes over the years.

Now that I’m Catholic, I want commentaries written by Catholics— but I like the format of the Protestant commentaries I read when younger. Luckily, there are commentaries for that: the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. So far I only have the one on the Gospel of Matthew.

These commentaries are nice because after every Bible passage it gives parts of the Catholic catechism that clear up points in the reading, and it also tells related passages from other books of the Bible, and if the Bible passage in question is part of the Church’s Mass readings, it tells the Church feast or occasion that the passage is used for.

There are also sections on ‘Reflection and Application—‘ which help prevent your Bible study from being a mere intellectual exercise. Very helpful. The only bad part of this series is that it is new, and only the New Testament books have been covered. Is an Old Testament series in the works? I don’t know, but I’m hoping one is forthcoming.

Both the Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture and the Tyndale Old Testament and New Testament commentaries were written by Bible scholars who teach at seminaries and colleges, or who at least have a comparable level of knowledge. They have deep knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew texts. This is the kind of commentary we need to build our knowledge.

I have a few other commentaries in my collection that don’t measure up to that standard. Some are slim volumes by J. Vernon McGee, an old-time radio Bible preacher. Now, I used to listen to McGee on the radio, but he was not a Bible scholar. And whenyou hear what he says about various Bible passages, you can wonder if what he was saying was based on knowledge, or just on a human opinion. For example, McGee believed that the Apostles did the wrong thing when they chose Matthias by lot to replace Judas Iscariot. McGee thought that St. Paul was the man God had chosen to replace Judas, but I don’t know if there is a single Bible passage that would confirm that.

Now, if I were stranded on a desert island with only my Bible and a complete set of McGee commentaries, I would read them, but I would not take McGee’s words as necessarily correct or wise. For that matter, even the best Bible scholars can have unwise or incorrect opinions. But I have more confidence in these two scholarly commentary series, and would prefer to use them since they are available.

Bible knowledge and your writing life: First thing to remember is that you don’t have to use everything you know. Even the most pious of Evangelical publishers does not like to publish books with long church-sermon-scenes and Bible-study-scenes. Such scenes slow down the action and make the work more dull for readers. You want to be planting seeds of faith, not dumping Bible and faith knowledge by the truckload.

My reading plan: I am currently reading the Gospel of Matthew with the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series. After I finish, I’m planning to do an Old Testament book, probably Psalms, using the Tyndale series. (I have a lot of OT commentaries from that series since I found a bunch for sale on Ebay.) After I do that, I’m hoping to afford the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Catholic series.

In the study of logic, one thing we learn is the logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is a mistaken way of thinking. Logical fallacies have been identified— often in ancient times— so we can learn not to make mistakes like that.

When you hear politicians making a personal attack upon other politicians, this is often an ad hominem attack. This is how it works. When you are discussing something— a proposed political policy— and perhaps you feel you don’t have a strong argument— instead of discussing the issue, you start discussing how evil the guy with the other position is.

Why is that a fallacy? Because bad people can hold a good idea just as good people can have bad ones. So, therefore, if you prove another person is a wife-beating swine, it doesn’t prove that the swine’s tax policy proposal is wrong.

You can talk about the policies or ideas of another person, or you can talk about the person himself. When you respond to a statement about an idea with a condemnation of a person with that idea, you are changing the topic. In a way, you may be admitting that you don’t have any good reason to reject the idea you are discussing, when you change the subject by starting a personal attack.

Another way to do something on the line of an ad hominem attack is to associate the disputed idea with a person who is generally regarded as objectively bad. The most popular bad person to use here is Hitler. The idea is bad, you claim, because Adolf Hitler was in favor of it. Or might have been in favor of it. Or was against it but might have changed his mind.

This is a somewhat indirect ad hominem attack. Instead of directly saying Joe, the guy who made a proposal for a tax reform, is a bad man and so his idea must be bad, you connect the idea to Hitler, and (usually) don’t actually say that Joe is just like Hitler for making the proposal.

The ad hominem attack is a type of logical fallacy which is called a non sequitur. Non sequitur means ‘it does not follow.’ In other words, it’s something that is not the point.

Now, if a human being— perhaps a politician— can be proved to be a swine, a racist, an adulterer, a liar, or corrupt, you can certainly mention such things when you evaluating the man’s character. It’s just that the man’s character does not affect whether his individual policies are good or bad. When talking about the policies— the ideas— the character of an individual who has these ideas is a non sequitur.

One of the most important things we could learn about people— either other people or fictional people— is their ‘life position.’ This position shows the conclusion that individual has drawn about himself, and about other people. Transactional Analysis gives 4 possible life positions:

I’m not OK — You’re OK

I’m not OK — You’re not OK

I’m OK — You’re not OK

I’m OK — You’re OK

The first thing we must learn is what is meant by being OK. It’s not defined in the book ‘I’m OK — You’re OK by Thomas A. Harris. Having read the book many times over the years, I conclude that ‘OK” means that you are adequate to do the kind of life tasks that people expect of you. You don’t have to have brilliant intelligence or saintly moral fiber. You just have to be good enough not to stand out among others as less than adequate.

The first life position indicated above, ‘I’m not OK — You’re OK’ is believed to be the universal position we adopt during early childhood, and many of us never change from that position. Think of what the life of a little baby is like. The baby can do nothing at first, and is dependent on others to feed him, change him, bathe him, and comfort him. The baby’s parents may be attentive to the child, or very inattentive, but if the baby managed to live we can assume that some minimal child care and feeding took place. The baby, as his mind begins to be able to analyze the world about him, feels inadequate or ‘not OK’ because he can do so little for himself. Other people must be OK in the baby’s mind, since they are the ones who have the life-skills to bring the baby food and comforts.

That’s the normal position. Even people with great parents and happy childhoods usually feel ‘not OK.’ But what about the second position? It is taken in early life by children who suffer abandonment, physical or psychological. The child in this position concludes, for whatever reason, that other people are not a reliable source of good things. Once he has decided that other people are also ‘not OK,’ he has trust issues and is harder to reach. This life position is one of hopelessness, and the person involved may suffer mental health issues and be hard to ‘reach’ in therapy.

The third position can be called the criminal position, since it can often be found in criminals. It happens when a child experiences abuse from parents or caregivers which seems to outweigh any good things that come from other people. But since the child isn’t abused when he is by himself, he concludes that being alone is OK— less painful, anyway— and that he is OK. At least, way more OK than the abuser. The child thus rejects others as ‘not OK,’ like the abuser is not OK, and also rejects social rules and the law, since they come from other people. The person in the third position is out for himself— since he is the only OK one, and the only source of good things for himself.

The preferred adult position— one that is recommended that adults adopt— is ‘I’m OK — You’re OK.’ You decide that you are good enough— adequate— after all. And that other people are OK too. This is, according to the book’s author, the only position not based on your feelings, but on reason— recognizing that there is no logical proof that you are ‘less OK’ than average. It is an optimistic position, and I am not sure how long a person can stay in the ‘I’m OK — You’re OK’ mode, no matter how much therapy you get. Those early not-OK feelings are still a part of you.

How does ‘OKness’ square up with Christian teachings? I’ve wondered that since I got the ‘I’m OK — You’re OK’ book as a high school girl in therapy. I conclude that being ‘OK’ does not in any way mean ‘free from sin.’ Being ‘OK’ does not give you permission to ignore Christian moral teachings, any more than it makes it OK to ignore the social rules that other people expect of you. And the Christian gospel doesn’t aim to make us ‘OK,’ but redeemed and sanctified.

How do we use the knowledge of the Four Life Positions in your life? The first thing to remember is that it’s normal that everyone around you has feelings of inferiority— not-OK feelings. Are you getting blog comments or social media comments that insult you or put you down? Remember that the commenter probably feels inferior to you. The commenter may feel that insulting you— and believing his own insults— will make him feel less inferior for a while.

On the other hand, you may get some comments or interactions which are kind and flattering, but show that the commenter utterly missed your point. The commenter probably is being kind because that’s a way to make him feel less ‘not OK.’ Being nice to others is a sign of being OK. And sometimes inferiority feelings put a barrier that make it harder for a person to understand what others are saying. They are so busy feeling not OK and in awe of you, someone they perceive as OK, that they may miss a few points. That’s why it’s helpful to be patient with others, and be willing to explain the same things more than once without getting impatient about it. Other people have stuff going on inside their heads that you don’t know about. Don’t worry about the people who miss your point if most of them understood. You’re allowed to feel OK too!

What about fictional people? The key is that everyone either feels not OK, or used to feel not OK before adopting another life-position. So every character, from your Lead to your villain to the guy who gets killed in Act 2 has this not OK feeling deep down. A character who says he feels OK, or adequate, or even competent or brilliant rarely feels that way deep down— at least not all the time. And all realistic characters have flaws. Yes, even if you read nothing but lives of the saints for a year, you will see that even very holy people have flaws.

What about villains? Should they all take the third life position, and be sociopaths? Well, first off that I’m not quite sure that all third-position people are actively sociopathic. And just because someone is a villain doesn’t mean they believe ‘I’m OK — You’re not OK’ or that they are selfish and sociopathic. In fact, many villains (or story antagonists that are not villains) believe that they are the enlightened ones, the kind ones, the just ones. If they do a horrible thing to your Lead character, it will be because they believe it the right thing to do.

Please actually read article before forming opinion, and look up the word ‘oxymoron’ in the dictionary if you don’t know it. And yes, I know, this post will probably lose me all my blog readers, some because of the SSA, some because of the Christianity/Catholicism.

To me there are many amazing things about the same-sex faux marriage movement. How they got a gay community who considered themselves the opposite of bourgeois married people to fight to participate in the bourgeois institution is beyond me. I guess propaganda really can do anything.

The problem is that the word marriage has a meaning, and substitutions are not a given. A lawyer and client, in American law, have a special relationship. And yet a client cannot sue his ex-lawyer for alimony! A proctologist need not expect to be granted equal rights to perform risky brain surgery. And you cannot have a priest-penitent relationship with your plumber— even if he’s a really great plumber!

Marriage is the union of two unlike elements: a man and a woman. To say that the woman is disposable, and can be replaced by a second man without changing anything, is insulting to women. To say that the man is disposable and can be replaced by a second woman is insulting to men. Pairs of men or of women are different from man-woman couples, and it’s kind of heterosexist to say otherwise.

In the past the gay community firmly rejected the notion that gay persons should form imitation heterosexual married couples. Back before I became a Catholic, I once joined a Lesbian lonely hearts club and appalled them by referring to my desired future partner as a ‘wife.’ Though of course in even earlier times, the gay community divided each sex into ‘butch’ and ‘femme’, masculine and feminine, and all gay couples were supposed to consist of one masculine and one feminine partner.

The thing is, words have meanings and there are required elements. A lifeboat in a ship needs to be an item that will float. Baptism requires water and not, for example, a handful of sand. A book writer has to actually write a book. And a marriage has a man and a woman.

Think about this: suppose I were to write a book of Lesbian fiction about two women who were life-partners as well as partners in solving crimes. And in the very first story one of the women is killed. Would the story be just as Lesbian if the surviving woman married a man? Or does a Lesbian life-partnership require two women, with no substitutions possible?

One big difference between a married couple and members of a Gay life-partnership is that a man-woman married couple, if they are young enough and fertile enough, can experience the birth of children whether they want kids or not. No contraceptives work 100%, and I’ve even heard of cases where a woman went in for an abortion and came out still pregnant. In a Gay life-partnership, children not only don’t happen by accident, they must be planned for and paid for. And they must accept that they cannot become biological parents together, but only one at most can be biologically related to the child, and they must obtain sperm or ova from some human being who will be equally a biological parent with them. Gay men often need a woman to provide the egg, and a different woman to go through the pregnancy— and then they have to hope these women go away for good and don’t seek out a relationship with the child.

Of course, when I was connected with the Lesbian community, there were loads of rumors that science could make a baby from two women, but they wouldn’t, because sexism. A couple decades have passed, and I still haven’t heard of any two-mommy babies, and I’m coming to believe they didn’t know how to make them all this time after all. At any rate, hell will freeze over before poor Lesbians will be able to afford custom-concieved two-mommy babies.

At any rate, this is reality: marriage requires a man and a woman the same way homicide requires a victim and a killer and Lesbian coupledom requires two Lesbians. And people who don’t like to accept realities like that are just not my problem.

As I have revealed in the article above, I am a woman with Same-Sex Attraction (SSA, Lesbian orientation) and I am also a Catholic convert who supports the teaching of the Church. If you are a homophobe or a Catholic-hater, you probably shouldn’t have read this blog post. Comments with homophobic or anti-Catholic hate are not published but will be laughed at. Civil comments, supportive and dissenting, are welcomed.

I have a pro-marriage Facebook page, and a pro-marriage MeWe group. You are welcome to join either or both if you also support marriage (Man & Woman.)

Some people on the outside of Christianity think that ‘faith’ is about ‘blind faith.’ Some also believe that there is no such thing as a theistic religion that is true, and that only the non-theistic religions like atheism, agnosticism and secularism could be true, and that is why the non-theists have blind faith in their non-theistic religion.

But in the real world, different religions make different truth claims, and contradictory claims cannot both be true. Aztecs believed that large numbers of human sacrifices pleased the gods. People in the Judeo-Christian faiths believe that God expressly rejects human sacrifice. Christianity rises or falls on whether Jesus Christ was, in fact, the Son of God (in a unique way) and whether He rose from the dead and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And Islam is based on the belief that Mohammed was a prophet in the Hebrew tradition, like Moses or Jesus.

A prophet in Judaism & Christianity is someone who has been given a message from God. The test of a prophet is whether he claims words as a prophecy which are not true. God does not give false information to prophets. So, then, what about Mohammed?

First I must say this: by asking questions about Mohammed I am not being mean to Muslims. Muslims are human beings that God loves. If their religion is false, shouldn’t someone tell them? I’ve had people claim my religion is false just because those people have blind faith that atheism is true and that ‘ha, ha, there is no God’ is a logical argument. And if Islam happens to be true, it will stand up to any questioning.

Mohammed claimed that all the words of the Koran were given to him by the angel Jibril (Gabriel.) Since God and His angels know the truth, the words of the Koran would not contain false information or mistakes— if Mohammed were, in fact, a prophet.

The worst sin of all, according to Islam, is shirk, or ascribing a partner to God. According to one modern-day Muslim writer, shirk is worse than murder, rape, child molesting and genocide. And although the Koran does say that Jews and Christians are not infidels like the pagans are, both religions, according to the Koran, are guilty of shirk.

Let’s take the Jews first. In Koran 9:30, it says ‘The Jews said ‘Ezra is the son of God.’ That is utterly false. That is not what Judaism teaches! If Mohammed were getting messages from the angel Gabriel, he would not say this false thing.

What about Christianity? Koran 5:116 says: “When God says ‘Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to people, “Take me and my mother as two gods alongside God?” this shows clearly that Mohammed misunderstood the Christian concept of the trinity. It never included Mary! There are New Testament passages that clearly speak of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, though the term ‘trinity’ was not used in the Bible.

Now, it does not disprove Mohammed as a true prophet that his message rejected the doctrine of the trinity. What disproves Mohammed as a prophet is that he was mistaken about what the Christians believed, and he incorporated this mistake into words he claimed came from God through the angel Gabriel. God would know what the Christians of Mohammed’s day were teaching!

There are many other places in the Koran which clearly show that the Koran was based on Mohammed’s personal and highly limited knowledge of what Jews and Christians believe. It claims that Abraham offered to sacrifice his illegitimate son Ishmael, and not his ‘child of promise’ son Isaac. It presumes that Mary the mother of Jesus and Miriam the sister of Moses were the same woman.

Of course, if a Muslim were to come across this evidence that Mohammed was a false prophet, he probably couldn’t do anything about it. In many Muslim countries, there are apostasy laws. These state that if anyone is a Muslim, he must not leave Islam, and can be executed or imprisoned if he tries. On the other hand, these laws welcome Christians and Jews and others to become Muslims— so long as they never try to leave Islam.

Even in Western nations, there is a perspective that Muslims who leave their faith must die. Americans Ergun and Emir Caner, two brothers who became Evangelical Christians, were estranged from their Muslim father by their conversion, and disowned. So Muslims who question the truth of their faith are in an impossible position, and we must pray that God will help them.

Are you a Muslim who questions? Ask God to guide you to the truth. Read the book below by the Caner brothers, both former Muslims, if you can obtain it. Do internet searches on former Muslims and web sites that tell the story of former Muslims— they will tell you the things that those other Muslims questioned. Don’t endanger yourself or your job by sharing your doubts with Muslims who may not sympathize. If you have questions about Christianity specifically, read a good information source like Dave Armstrong’s blog. Feel free to ask any questions you have here in a comment— if I don’t know the answer, I will try to find out. And at least I will pray for you.

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am not an expert in Islam or a scholar. Any information in this article came from books I read about Islam. In addition, I have looked up Koran verses in my own copy of the Koran. I find the books listed below useful for those searching out information about the possibility that Mohammed was not a true prophet.

Freedom of speech. A lot of people don’t really believe in it any more. They want their social media cleared of ‘hate speech’— which often includes conservative speech, and quoting Bible verses about homosexuality. But social media can’t afford to have a human evaluator (censor) read through every potential post before it gets actually posted. And so many criminals like the synagogue shooter have Twitter accounts, and for some reason in spite of Twitter’s anti-hate policy he got to stay there— where some of my conservative friends got suspended or banned.

If you have heard media reports about the social media Gab, you have probably been lied to. Gab is not a racist/antisemite haven— I’ve SEEN sites that are racist/antisemite havens when I was researching extremists for a writing project. Gab is a FREE SPEECH oriented social media. I got on it when some conservative-libertarian writer friends of mine recommended it. On Gab I have seen antisemites, but I have also seen Jewish people and pro-Israel people. I have seen ‘racialists’ [actual racists who admit they are racist] and liberals and members of the US Republican party— the party that freed the Black slaves. I’ve seen smutty naked posts and devout Christian clean posts. That’s what FREE SPEECH is about— people are free to speak their OWN minds, not just reflect what other people think is right.

NOW: I am sure there are some of you who presume that I am racist, antisemitic or ‘ALT-RIGHT’ myself. I don’t like to hear racialist speech because I have Ottawa Indian ancestry and I wouldn’t be pure enough for that type. As a Christian, I don’t care for antisemitic remarks because my personal Lord and Savior is a Jewish dude! As for ALT-RIGHT, the few people I know who use that as a self-description don’t mean it the way the media does. I’d need way more information before I personally would demonize the ALT-RIGHT. And as for the real bad guys like Neo-Nazis— will taking away their FREE SPEECH make them into nicer people? Are they better off only speaking their mind in secret, hidden Nazi forums? Or will they become better people if they are free to interact with the rest of us? I despise most of what such people say, but as the saying goes, I will defend to my death their FREE SPEECH rights to say it.

Muting and Blocking

How do you use a FREE SPEECH social media like Gab? The first thing is to learn how to mute or block other users. Gab makes it easy. I routinely block people who mostly post photos of private parts. I don’t necessarily bother to block all Neo-Nazis. If they are in the Gab topics or groups I use, I may well correct the things they say! On a Christian Gab topic, an antisemite blamed ‘the Jews’ for the martyrdom of the Apostles. I pointed out that Jesus and his Apostles WERE Jewish people, and that early martyrs got persecuted by the Romans as well as local Jewish authorities. Gab went down temporarily not long after I posted that so I don’t know if he responded. If he persistently annoyed me, I would have blocked.

I know that a lot of us are scared of the consequences of free speech. We get told in the media daily that wrongspeech causes ‘hate crimes.’ But they aren’t too worried when left-wing media personalities literally call for the assassination of the current US president! It’s only wrongspeech that won’t vote for them that worries them. The fact is that unless there is FREE SPEECH, none of us is safe. Facebook and Twitter, social media which are known for taking down alleged hate, takes down a lot of innocent conservative and Christian posts, but if you are conservative and someone on Facebook tells you essentially to eat sh-t and die, and steals your profile picture to do it, Facebook won’t do dick about it. I have a conservative FB page about man-woman marriage, and I’ve been told I’m crazy, a liar, a fraud, and that my (now dead) disabled kitten was ugly— with a lot of dirty words mixed in to the insults. I really think the only reason that page hasn’t been taken down yet is that I admit I have same-sex attraction (‘gay’ or ‘ex-gay’ identity) and though I also admit I’m chaste, I might still be a protected ‘minority’ and that protects me from FB persecution.

The lesson of the Gab takedown is that we need to defend FREE SPEECH, and we need to protect those social media that don’t ban alleged ‘haters’ and that really allow free speech. If you want a social media presence, as writers and bloggers need to survive these days, you need multiple social media. Any social media could arbitrarily ban you, any social media that advocates for FREE SPEECH can be taken down overnight. You need a backup, and, yeah, that means more social media work. But we can’t afford to put all our social media eggs in one basket.

Currently, Gab is still transitioning to a new hosting provider after widespread attacks on that social media. Twitter, however, is not under immediate threat in spite of the fact that the synagogue shooter had a Twitter account. The Gab service does still have a Twitter account, so you can follow that account to be updated as to when Gab gets up again. It’s also an opportunity to get Gab’s point of view unfiltered by the biases of the news media.

I recommend that once Gab gets back up, you prayerfully consider starting an account there, just to show your belief in FREE SPEECH. If you do believe in it. You don’t have to actively use Gab a lot. Just try it. Get to know the reality of it. It does not have the wide user base of the censorship media like Facebook and Twitter, but it does have a band of very loyal users. Once Gab is back up, I plan to research an article on how to use Gab more effectively.

Don’t you just hate propaganda terms like ‘marriage equality’ and ‘the Jewish problem?’ It’s just a way to hide what you are really talking about— eliminating marriage or eliminating Jews, in those cases.

The campaign to replace marriage with ‘marriage equality’ doesn’t like to mention the fact that it will require essentially closing down all Bible-believing churches (and synagogues) lest they read ‘hate speech’ off the pages of the Bible. I honestly believe that many of the Left-wing politicians preaching ‘marriage equality’ don’t give a fig for gay people. They just want to shut down their rival for power— the Church.

A new generation is growing up that hasn’t learned the teachings of the Church or of the Bible. They preach odd stuff like the idea that if Jesus didn’t personally say ‘No Gay marriage’ then the fact that the Bible speaks out against homosexual behaviors and lusts does not count. Here is what Jesus has to say about that bad theology: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Matthew 5:17 KJV

Here are some verses to consider when making up your mind whether to conform to progressive ideology on #MarriageEquality:

“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” Romans 1: 26-28 KJV

If we conform to the world and accept same-sex marriage, rejecting God’s word, will we be given over to a ‘reprobate mind?’

“Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Jude 1:7 KJV

The world calls sins of the flesh ‘sexual liberation,’ but God takes such sins seriously.

“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.” 1 Timothy 1:9-10 KJV

Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, but we are not called to live in our sins. Murders, unchastity, homosexuality and lying are not a part of a Christian life.

“Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” 1 Cor. 7:2 KJV

Fornication is a sexual sin which includes any sexual act outside of a valid man-woman marriage. Homosexual relations and heterosexual adultery are both forbidden.

“Know yet not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 KJV

Effeminate (Strong’s #3120, Greek) means effeminate, soft, a catamite. A man who dressed as a woman to lure men into homosexual behavior. Roman culture distinguished between the effeminate man who took the woman’s role in sex, and the ‘manly’ man who took the masculine role in homosexual sex, and who was not considered a homosexual person. The Bible condemns both types of homosexual behaviour along with fornication drunkenness, theft and other sins. And it says ‘such were some of you!’ So it means people with gay/homosexual attractions, even with a long history of gay sex, can be saved if they repent, just like the drunks and the thieves can be saved if they repent.

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is abomination.” Leviticus 18:22

It does not say that it is wrong to ‘be’ homosexual or to be tempted by homosexual relationships. It’s all about what you do. God understands that some of us are tempted by same-sex relationships.

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Leviticus 20:13

This seems harsh, but God in Leviticus was teaching the people the way to be holy. God teaches us right from wrong, but when Man sins, God comes to earth as Jesus Christ to die on the Cross so we don’t have to suffer eternal death for our sins. Praise the Lord!

NOTE: if you feel you are ‘Gay’ or are troubled by attractions to persons of the same-sex, you are not condemned by God for those feelings! Look at 1 Corinthians 11— And such were some of you. You can overcome Gay feelings and be forgiven for Gay-related sins. The Church has a ministry, Courage International, to help people with Same-Sex Attraction (SSA) deal with this issue. I have Same-Sex Attraction myself (I don’t use the terms Gay or Lesbian any more since Courage Int. discourages it) and the people I met through the Courage FB group have helped me have hope. Jesus never gave up on me when I was a Lesbian looking for love, when I gave up on Christianity and became a neopagan for years. He still brought me back to reality and to the Catholic Church (I was raised Protestant.) God is Good!

SECOND NOTE: If you tweet these Bible verses you might get banned from Twitter. I’m tweeting them anyway, but I’m on Gab and MeWe as well so I can’t get wholly shut down. I hope.

Nissa Annakindt: Poet, Aspie & cat person

I share what I know— be warned! My opinions on politics and religion are loudly proclaimed here from time to time. (‘Deplorable’ & Catholic, respectively. I also have Same-Sex Attraction, which I handle with chastity.)

I welcome civil comments but can’t always reply as I’m over-busy & also because I have an autism spectrum disorder and social interaction’s not what I’m good at.

Nissa Annakindt

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